france's military is guarding one of the biggest iranian mines in. say they want a better deal with paris and could be looking for other countries. locals from recently liberated parts of money playing the france led offensive against islamic militants has come at

a high cost. as america's new top diplomat. revelations that many in the foreign service for all the time in the country. and the opposition in kuwait to keep protesting against the country's unelected ruthless another activist from behind bars for criticizing them on a. life . in moscow this is r.t. with the twenty four hours a day the president of has confirmed that french troops have been guarding one of the country's biggest iranian mines in a bid to avoid a repetition of last month's hostage crisis in neighboring algeria. spoke to my colleague. the mine in question is the olive facility

a location in which the french company a river has a large stake now it's important to know that this is the second mission in africa completely separate from france's mission in mali which has been going on for nearly a month as neighbors mali and the situation continues to remain unstable the french government is making it clear that they are ready and willing to protect their assets in the region and on the african continent as a whole protecting assets in the region many know the gets most of its energy from nuclear power hence the uranium is very very important indeed so massive economic concerns are indeed but as you also mentioned we've called the french led multinational intervention going going in mali now boots on the ground in nigeria where it's certainly getting a lot of reaction from critics around the world at the moment certainly has been if you ask france they've pointed to the incident that happened last month in eastern algeria when islam ists took over a gas plant there eventually leading to forty eight people being killed thirty seven of those foreign workers france is predicting that more islamist retaliation

to french presence in africa is likely and they say they want to prevent a tragic situation like this from happening again but then again there is the world's fifth largest producer of uranium a product that is vital to the french economy in fact it's estimated that nearly all or at least seventy five percent of france's electric infrastructure is dependent on nuclear power given this it makes sense that france would want to protect that resource at all costs the president has welcomed the french presence in the country and recognizes the need for the having security but has also stated that they want to better deal when it comes to uranium exports measures economy is also largely dependent on your radio as well critics have already been wary of french involvement in mali claiming that the real motivation is a return to imperialism economic policy and a stronger control of a region that used to be french territory now with france's expansion into neighboring countries compiled with president expressing his concerns those critics now have a bit more that they can chew on. clint who's the director of studies at the

institute of democracy and cooperation in paris believes securing natural resources is not the only goal from in the region. i think the two main factors in this are france's own desire to strengthen the whole role on the international stage in particular piece of you know european partners and also the american strict egypt plans for africa it's important to know that america which strongly supports france in this mali and intervention has plans for establishing a military presence in the military control over the whole of the african continent some people speculated that used the phrase that this was america leading from behind that america decided to put forward its european allies to do as it were it starts to work in a continent where as i'm sure many of your you viewers know china has been establishing an economic presence now very successfully for

a large number of years so there is a scramble for africa isn't there or is it just to grab the resources yes it's obvious that the securing of energy resources is one of the key factors behind many if not most political developments today and that's why i say that the of course the issue of hydrocarbons and uranium and other energy sources is a key and may be the decisive factor. meanwhile a northeastern monny french jets have carried out a series of airstrikes on the bases and fuel deputies of islamic terrorists with the intervention now heading towards the desert and away from the cities r.t. reports on what's left on the ground after the liberating troops move on. francois hollande victorious trip to timbuktu marked the declaration that the three major cities of northern mali have been declared liberated from rebel although the sharia law and islamic extremism of the rebels and forced will not soon be

forgotten nevertheless this victory is a partial the militants have merely retreated and fled and the suffering in this war has seems disproportionate to the gains made as we're learning what happened in battle day by day in the town of kona like we heard stories from the fog of war this is small settlement in the mopti region was seized by the tribe they fled to the north when french troops showed up but it's reported that the cost of that victory was high while french planes killed only two rebels the number of civilian casualties was an estimated fourteen. i wasn't home when the bombing began i started praying when i learned my house was under attack they ruined everything i had my family and my livelihood my wife's name was i mean she was forty my son ali was eleven who made adam was tanned and say no good was six they all died. people such as this farmer idris ask themselves if the victory was worth it. we

also met the campo family who had suffered badly when the bombing began everyone scatter it the campo lost two of their son to school unable to swim they drowned in the river fleeing the fighting. we also heard the story of a young mother who died from shelters leaving three children behind a newborn baby. the village was a complete mess it's impossible to describe any discuss things i know for sure but i can say that all we had is god. there's over a few proving some kids came running up to us and said their mum had donated but i brought them to our house their mother died after an hour of clinging to life the children have nobody else but us. screaming as they're going to disaster visited every house in the town people reject anything the military claims about victory and say war crimes must be prosecuted under the geneva convention towns like color

want more than just compassion people who suffered at the hands of terrorist groups and drug traffickers are now facing the misery inflicted by warfare about that your body without guns or watch or. and while the president forceful and maybe hailing the ongoing french military campaign in west africa as a success that small that can be said about his politics back home. reports now from paris. well president on land is welcomed as a liberator in mali after france's military operation against the islamists occupation back at home crowds are also gathered but with a starkly different mood where people are fired up over the continued decline of europe's second largest economy despite the president's promises to create at least one hundred thousand new jobs the nation is shedding them at an alarming rate last november about

a thousand every day the worst figures in years the country's unemployment is approaching a shocking eleven percent with more than three million jobless the french daily live claims that the exact situation could be even worse if official statistics included youngsters never registered for the unemployment program or those who left it and those stuck with part time work the paper says the rate would then triple but there are certain. people expected to have a strong president and now they understand that a line doesn't have enough experience for competence to improve things the last two weeks as we see problems like you. know believes the strategic mistake was to ratify the e.u. so-called three percent treaty force in france to reduce its budget deficit down from four point five percent by hiking taxes and cutting spending. but while harsh criticism expected from the opposition disapprovals also been growing from like

minded left wingers or complain but i think the president especially of a country like france one of six e.u. founders should be strong enough to say stop to others and say hey i have my nation behind me and they elected me to make changes instead he surrendered because he's more worried about the country's debt and the ratings agencies make. in a short video french communists put together some of our lawns major presidential campaign vows none of which they say came true. look what that's going to be oh the value added tax increase. i think it's an appropriate and unjustified and unreasonable and too hasty. what happened to well that's to remind the presidents do you remember you promised to review the european treaty you didn't do that your member you said a three percent deficit isn't real but now only say it's possible etc etc you can't do what you promised meanwhile recent polls show a little rise in the fringes of libor eighteen thirty four percent during your read

december's forty percent so lawyers see salons to office in may. every week that is a new subject to discuss in the french media and to draw people's attention from the real problems like gay monitor deprived you are now molly this strategy may work but not for long. after a long and wonder french election last year some analysts described his victory as a victory against his predecessor. rather the first lines now of the scene many things the past of the team that wins in the. months of a presidency have been anything but sunny and even his one staunch supporters predict even harder times lie ahead for the leader of the country's municipal elections in two thousand and fourteen have historically held great significance and will show whether they can forget and forgive. me from paris. i mean up

a little later in the program for you dissolving the ministry the artistic director of moscow's world famous ballet heads to germany for special treatment of the saying he knows who's behind the violent acid attack on him two weeks ago that story and plenty of others just ahead after the break. the polygraph tests now are guilty until proven innocent a cia veteran points the finger at his former employees saying the agency's compulsory polygraph tests are beyond the law and simply ineffective the details on that for you just ahead. secretary of state hillary clinton recently testified to congress in regards to the attack on the us consulate was killed an american ambassador in benghazi libya during the testimony couldn't rather calmly said things like that the revolutions

that sprang up during the arab spring like in libya where the events in bali have created instability and safe havens for terrorists and she made it clear that there is no doubt that the algerian terrorists had weapons from libya so the us secretary has basically admitted that the actions of the usa and nato have caused a mass instability that has allowed the seeds of terrorism to grow when the justification for most of the actions in the muslim world is to stop evil dictators who harbor terrorists or spread chatting to mock recy if libya would have been left alone algerian terrorists wouldn't be getting any weapons from it now this is like an exterminator accidentally or maybe on purpose actually feeding the roaches in your basements that there are ten times more of them and then saying that he has to keep working because he's the only one who can get rid of the roaches people like hillary clinton who support funding brutal jihad it's rebel groups to overthrow governments to somehow bring about stability and democracy are either dismally

stupid or consciously running a very brutal con game but that's just my opinion. and this continues here in r.t. israel is reportedly considering building a buffer zone with a high tech security fence and on its border with syria it's designed to prevent threats from radicals if the assad regime is overthrown. i spoke to an eleven a he believes that tel aviv is motivation has nothing to do with security. or merely to you does know. of the time of the. sort of can see there were no attacks against israel by the insurgents not by the regime itself so this is a mere pretext israel wants to take advantage of. weakening regime in syria to improve its strategic position especially in defense of its claim to the

golan heights imposing a buffer zone will make israel in the future to. negotiate over withdrawing from this buffer of their own zone rather than withdrawing from the golan this is an attempt to annex more territories and it's at the same time and at them to threaten . damascus itself if israel expands its domain by another seventeen kilometers this will make it reach close very close to damascus it's trying to destabilize the regime and it knows very well that the collapse of the regime will lead to a probable division of syria which runs in the interest of israel. in kuwait an opposition activist has reportedly been sentenced to five years in prison for criticizing the country's unelected ruler on twitter it's the third time a person has been convicted on such charges in the country in the last two months

speaking out against the enemy out of kuwait is considered a state security charge and just international recently hit hard at the monarchy for increasing restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly protests have been raging against the government and its crackdown on dissent since two thousand and eleven tension flared even more often than the parliament told by the opposition one former m.p. claims the country's democracy has been disfigured. we refute claims that the national assembly represents the people of kuwait around seventy percent of the people boycotted the election and the assembly itself was elected thanks to an unconstitutional decree by the government which wanted a parliament it could control its lawmakers have failed to address widespread allegations of corruption democracy has taken a twisted for it is the only democracy which is seeing an increase of corruption we will continue to hold peaceful marches peaceful rallies and we will continue to

gather and protest. and now to another monarchy that has its own problems with the opposition and that is bahrain anti regime protesters there once again clash with police in various parts of the country used tear gas against the crowds which were wholly bombs. being cracking down on pro-reform demonstrators for two years arresting thousands including prominent activists the government claims is taking steps to address the brutality of the security forces but opposition campaign is daily assaults continued unabated. the number of dead from a suicide bomb attack on a group of al-qaeda fighters has risen to nineteen more than forty others were wounded incident took place as men gather to collect their son a result sought an office in a town north of baghdad the blood. comes a day after several suicide attackers targeted a provincial police headquarters in kirkuk killing at least fifteen people and wounding dozens. a skeleton found under a car park in the city of leicester in the u.k.

it's been confirmed as that of king richard the third the monarch was the last english king to be killed in battle back in fourteen eighty five but his grave was lost in the sixteenth century after the demolition of the church he was buried next to remains will be reinterred in leicester cathedral for the details of the burial ceremony yet to be released explosions were referred to. the artistic director of moscow's bolshoi ballet is travelling to germany for specialist treatment after a violent acid attack against him just over two weeks ago doctors there will be trying to help save said again billions eyesight artesian in english to reports from the hospital where he was taken immediately after the attack. it is doing rather well surprisingly well actually he did thank the doctors for doing everything in their power to pull him out of a very difficult situation that. third degree burns and those are very severe space and he said he's full of hope for full recovery and he's full of willpower and he

actually looked very enthusiastic and the whole situation of course considering his circumstances actually did appear to be his road to recovery did speak about who is who has been supposedly behind the attack he did say that he knows exactly who it was on this particular day today did not want to talk about the investigation at all so as not to interfere with the investigation he did however. he did to receive threats before but he also mentioned and this is important according to himself he didn't mention that he's continuing to work with everybody who has been left in charge. he said that nothing is. changing on the performances and everything about the theater will be carrying on before. with john kerry being sworn in as the new u.s. secretary of state last week the white house may have been hoping for some

favorable coverage of its diplomatic efforts but you have to pay to play a role in the foreign service of. capitol hill what is going to check on all. representing the united states in western europe and a small chance of serving in say central asia or sub-saharan africa donors and advisers involved in the diplomatic selection process the competition this year has been so tight that those who have raised less than a million dollars are for the most part on likely to be considered this monday was john kerry's first working day as secretary of state these are challenging times for u.s. foreign service u.s. embassies have come under attack in a number of muslim countries just within the last year the u.s. ambassador to libya was killed in september. shortly after the u.s. helped carry out regime change there is a sense of denial in washington that this rage against the americans in the muslim

world has something to do with washington's policies in those countries the u.s. has been very much invested in the middle east and north africa and from what we heard during john kerry's confirmation hearing at the moment the administration is reluctant to get involved militarily in syria and is also trying to play down the drums of war with iran but that may change very quickly because the u.s. still continues to threaten war with iran it's unclear what john kerry's role will be as a secretary of state in supporting or stopping the war he likes to present himself as this war politician but he is the same politician who voted to authorize the iraq invasion with no evidence at hand that iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction so john kerry has a mixed record to and certainly big challenges ahead the u.k. is reportedly preparing to test out a brand new drug which could herald a breakthrough in the art of unmanned wolf and the aircraft is designed to be undetectable by radar and you could even see targets but so is on the surface

reports now from london. it can fly faster than the speed of sound it can deploy its own weapons and it can go deep into enemy territory now this is the nearly british super drain as it's known in the transistors been under development for many many years now costing hundreds of millions of pounds already but it's thought that this revolutionary new secret is going to be taking is maiden voyage over the next couple of weeks that's what's expected now military chiefs has said that the trying to swell pave the way for a whole new generation of these new drones and it's being billed as the future of the air force but experts have warned that this could open the doors to a whole new type of warfare there's concerns about robo wolf air where machines that are able to launch their own attacks could attack humans and of course a lot of control the sea that always surrounds the use of drones as well but let's

deal then with the here and now because the controversy surrounding drone warfare has been highlighted recently when the u.n. launched an investigation in to civilian deaths caused by the drones now assisting the u.n. in their research it's a team from goldsmiths university of london and i'm joined by one of that team now professor. and i think you very much for joining us this new technology a lot of talk about a lot of excitement but a huge number of unanswered questions that go along with these developments you're taking part in this investigation now we haven't even really got questions answered eight of the legality of these attacks and yet we're seeing technology sort of leapfrogging over the law at this point i think that what. we are seeing a de facto legislation by practice. of warfare actually creating the law for the problem of the law for war because it always lags behind the

technologies are full of course the chronology moves much. faster than the laws of war and if technology changed the way in which we conduct our wars when we speaking about drone warfare we're not really speaking about the area bomb being we're speaking about targeted attacks and especially the kind of the new type of attack that we've been seeing in the last decade that is called the extra troops juridical assassination these really are based on kill ists and they're compiled by somebody either authorized by the people with the reason or transparency and we do not know how that process is undertaken and of course this is really what your investigations hinge on is gathering all important data is that absolutely in the forensic architecture project at goldsmiths what we look at is the nature of war in an urban area and the most strong acts are launched on inhabited area areas with a lot of civilians with civilians and militant are entangled in the numbers are

very difficult to establish because both israel and the united states would consider every man over a certain age sometimes sixteen sometimes eighteen is a militant by definition we know it is not true the details of that investigation the results are expected towards the end of the year at tabor thank you for joining us today to talk about british steeped and of course all the unanswered questions that go along with that. there are thousands of people in america are forced to undergo polygraph testing every year in the name of national security that's a minute expose ringing the alarm over u.s. federal agencies exceeding their legal and ethical limits to determine who can be trusted or to report not has more for us on this. for more than three decades john sullivan worked as a polygraph examiner for america's central intelligence agency today the retired cia employee is offering some strong opinions about the nation's lie detector policy too many honest people are too many people who should be passing their tests

aren't and i and there's no there's no accountability for that. last year more than seventy three thousand americans were reportedly required to undergo polygraph tests in order to get or keep jobs with the federal government according to an investigation by mcclatchy newspapers a growing number of u.s. agencies are asking employees and applicants intimate questions that extend way beyond the realm of national security probing matters such as sexual conduct financial matters and past personal relationships a woman was pressured to talk about her experience being molested as a child and when the polar bear for said that he refused to go on with the interrogation he alleges that he was pressured to go back and continue and tara gating are a decade ago the national academies an organization advising washington on

scientific matters urged the feds to stop using polygraphs as a screening technique scientists found that polygraphs aren't reliable enough to prevent innocent people from failing and deceptive candidates from passing i think it's important to understand that the polygraph is not just. for screening it's an interrogation tool. there's a question that they trip that leads to an indication of deception the drilling down. questions that they get asked may well be quite true over the past ten years. at least fifteen federal agencies including the n.s.a. and f.b.i. have reportedly continued or expanded their polygraph screenings with nearly five million people having access to classified information washington maintains that polygraph testing is the most effective way from preventing secrets from being

leaked lisa ribicoff is an independent polygraph examiner and investigator who uses the polygraph program designed by homeland security she contends that it's ninety eight percent accurate i do think that there are some questions pertaining to some emotional aspects and personal situations should not be included but i do understand why they're included on the basis of that the government needs to see how exactly what their breaking point is what are they willing to discuss what are they not willing to discuss however applicants who are denied a coveted position after failing a polygraph are prohibited from accessing the records of their interrogation and are often barred from contesting the results were filing complaints in federal court in two thousand and four the cia veteran who conducted lie detector interrogations for thirty one years failed his own screening there was absolutely no question in my mind the test was wrong. was

a terrible test sullivan lost his security clearance and was denied a job with a federal contracting agency he claims his examiner falsified the results possible retribution for sullivan his book detailing america's polygraph system subs a come in for a polygraph test now are guilty until proven innocent and i think that's. a corruption and abuse of the process the obama administration is now promising to draft a new national polygraph policy that would prevent agencies from pushing legal or ethical boundaries during screenings but at the moment the program has no oversight or eligibility meaning tens of thousands of u.s. citizens will continue getting personally probes in the name of new. security up we're not party new york. time now for the business update with natasha natasha is it true that be forthcoming winter olympic games in sochi here in russia in twenty fourteen they're going to be become the most expensive games ever well that's if

you trust the official estimates of a fifty billion dollars price tag i'll tell you all about why and what that actually means in the business both after a short break right thanks very much. do we speak your language as i think about the war not being.